


A Full Moon

by LawrIsNotMocked



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: 24601 - Freeform, Ambience, Barricade aftermath, Canon Era, Canonical Character Death, Chases, Conflict, Confusion, Gen, Inspector Javert - Freeform, Jean Valjean - Freeform, Les Miserables - Freeform, Major Character Injury, Marius Pontmercy - Freeform, Rescue, Seine, Suicide, Thenardier is bad, atmosphere, mood, sewer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-21 20:45:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9565661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LawrIsNotMocked/pseuds/LawrIsNotMocked
Summary: Some details of the aftermath of the battle at the barricade.  Some violence, some graphic details.  Pretty much follows the story... not entirely canon, but pretty close (I tweaked a few details).  More of a sort of atmospheric thing.  Feelings, ambience, etc.  Not a lot of dialogue or significant character interaction.  Just sort of... the details of how the night went following the loss at the barricade.  A mood piece, maybe.





	1. A Gentle Breeze

**Author's Note:**

> My first fanfic. Please leave a comment if you liked something in particular! Or comment if you'd like to see more of my writing... suggestions are always welcome too! :)

Around 5pm on a warm spring evening, a battle has just ended in the streets. The sun is beginning to set around this time. It casts its orange and pink glow upon a broken barricade, and shadows upon the men and women who have fallen there. At the top near the center, a large red flag is draped unceremoniously over some old doors and carts. And draped over that flag is the body of a young man. He has fallen for his beliefs, as have his comrades. Unfortunately, they have lost the battle this evening. Blood slowly runs down his face in a gruesome, but poignant display. His blonde hair and the flag flap slightly in a gentle breeze. An older man appears near the barricade, and throwing a cautious glance around, approaches a young man who is lying on the ground. His footsteps clack and echo in the lonely streets. He kneels near the man, bending his upper half to put an ear to his chest. Seemingly satisfied by what he hears, the older man lifts the boy onto his back, and begins to haul him off. As the shadows grow longer and the colors of the evening darken, they descend into the sewers.


	2. A Darkened Tunnel

A middle-aged man with missing teeth rifles through the pockets of the dead. He pulls gold teeth out of their mouths. With a nasty snarl, the man picks a pocket watch off of a man who has died hours before. As he eyes it and sees it is still ticking, he smirks and comments quietly to himself (as no one else is alive to hear), “Time don’t stop for the dead.” He stumbles over bodies in this sewer that are rapidly turning the murky, contaminated waters to a deeper shade of red and brown. Every now and then, the thief pauses to examine a corpse or two, for whatever reason. Sometimes he pulls an item off of a boy. At one point, he notices one of the young men at his feet is still twitching, just barely alive. The middle-aged man bares his rotting teeth in a foul display of dominance, and kicks the other until he no longer moves at all.


	3. A Horrible Echo

Shivering now in the damp, dark underground of the sewer-turned-catacomb, the older man hauling the boy he found at the barricade begins to quicken his already-shaky step. He trips a couple times over fallen comrades of the young man, and shudders both times. On his legs, he now has a coating of blood, human waste, dirt, and anything else that might be festering in the sewer. Suddenly, in the distance, he hears something he did not expect in tunnels that are filled with what he thought was only death and decay. It freezes him in place. He hears the echoing voice of another man, and it cries out, “God is dead!!” A gravelly laugh follows, and the older man, named Jean Valjean, begins to run as fast as he can, considering his cargo.


	4. A Parting Mist

Roughly 45 minutes later, Valjean finally sees an exit. He musters up the last of his strength, shifts the boy, whose name is Marius Pontmercy, upon his shoulder to a more comfortable (if that is possible) position, and makes his way towards the faint light. He reaches the end of the sewer, a grate. A door. He pulls it open to emerge into the evening air. The streets are still barren, and the still warm-ish air clashes with the damp chill that the sewer holds. Besides the muck and horrible debris on his pants, Valjean’s sweat covers his skin, and it cools when he collapses onto the street. A misty steam collects around the entrance to the sewer where the old man and the boy have dropped. Through it, he can see the moon rising in the sky. It is a full moon tonight. The lights of the city twinkle faintly in the distance. Just as he passes out with one final great heaving sigh, one other person is out and about on this particular evening, and he is approaching the unconscious pair. His boots crack sharply against the stones of the red-tinged street. He stops in front of Valjean and Marius.


	5. A Renewed Purpose

When he re-awakens, Valjean looks up in a bleary haze to see the steam part in front of him. In the midst of that parting fog is a tall man, dressed in a dark uniform. His strong stance and clean apparel seem a striking opposite of the sight before him. He looks down at Valjean, and Valjean is certain this man has been staring at him for some time. “Inspector… please. I must get this boy to sa-“ He is cut off by the inspector. “I have hunted you down through thick and thin, through night and day, across the years, 24601.” The tall man spits the number. “Do you honestly think I would let you go now?” He snarls, and his pale eyes gleam menacingly in the moonlight. Valjean can see above the man’s shoulder that the moon has risen higher in the sky now. “Inspector Javert, please. Please, I… I must get this boy to a doctor or to someone who can take care of him! He will die, Inspector, if no one tends to his wounds. I found him on the barricade, and he’s still barely alive. Please, he is but a boy!” Valjean is pleading for the boy’s life, not his own. Begging this dark man. “Then you can take me in. I swear it. Just let me get him to… to my daughter! She loves him. You can follow me there, and I will return to you in a few minutes, after I deliver him there. Please, I swear this is the last thing I must do,” he huffs. Javert can see the man is tired, defeated, and sincere. The tall man in uniform considers all of this for a long moment, and finally mutters, “This is an insult. You must think me mad! To be lead by a criminal. A convict! Go on, 24601. Take this boy. This is the final time I give in to you!” Slowly, Valjean rises to his feet, a renewed sense of purpose and determination building within him, and gathers Marius upon his shoulder again. He is unsure if the boy is even still breathing.


	6. A Quiet Ride

After a fairly quick fiacre ride to Valjean’s residence, Valjean breaks the awkward tension and silence by stating, “I will take the boy inside for a few quick moments, then I am yours.” Javert nods sharply, not uttering a reply. His face is still stern in the moonlight. Valjean pulls the unconscious boy from the cart, and denies help from the driver. Javert watches as he hauls him inside, and steps out into the street, himself. This unyielding man hears a faint cry of a young woman from inside the residence exclaiming, “Papa! Marius!!” He stops listening after that. The driver asks if he should wait. Javert considers the question for a few seconds, then quietly tells him no, and to go on. After the cart has rolled off down the street, Javert casts a final glance up at the front of the building where Jean Valjean and the revolutionary had disappeared into several minutes ago. It is roughly 9:30pm, and the full moon is fairly high in the clear sky. The night air is chilly, but not cold. A breeze whistles down the street, and Javert wraps his dark coat around him, and sets off towards the river.


	7. A Bowed Head

Some time later, Javert arrives at a bridge over the Seine. Troubled thoughts about Valjean and his past whirl around in his mind, mimicking the water below him. The tall inspector removes his hat and a few items out of his pocket. He sets them near the railing, careful they don’t blow away or drop into the icy waters below. His conflicted thoughts confuse and bother him, and he cannot bear them anymore. Simply, his world has changed. It cannot hold him any longer. Javert kneels to pray, thinking that perhaps if there is a god, he will forgive him for the sin he is about to commit. Surely he will not be admitted to Heaven or any such place, but it is worth a try. His long, usually straight hair falls over his shoulder messily as he bows his head. Two minutes later, he stands straight, and calmly walks over to the railing that keeps him from the water. He swings his legs gracefully over, and stands on the very edge of life. He sighs deeply and looks up at the full moon. Then suddenly, without any sort of warning, the inspector lets go of the railing and slips down into the ever-flowing chaos of the Seine.


	8. A Shiver

Around that same time, Valjean is about to step back outside, but glances out of the window first to look for Javert, then announce his goodbye to his daughter. But Valjean does not see Javert or the fiacre. His previous feeling of dread is now one of confusion… and a growing sense of relief and disbelief. Could Javert really have changed his mind? Could he really have set Valjean free? Valjean was uncertain of these things, but he had a sneaking, creeping feeling deep down that he might not see Javert again. Intuition, perhaps. The old man’s daughter noticed him staring out the window with an odd expression on his face. “Papa? Is something wrong?” “No, Cosette… I’m alright. We’re alright. We’re going to be OK,” he smiles at her. She smiles in reply as she goes over to tend the slowly-waking Marius. Valjean looks back out the window one last time, at the full moon, and notices out of the corner of his eye, a crow taking flight out of a tree. In the distance, miles away and beyond Valjean’s hearing, a splash is heard by some. As Jean Valjean perceives the crow, he shivers briefly, and perhaps it is not because the temperature has dropped even more since that evening at the barricade.


End file.
